Netherlands

The Dutch registration plate font utilizes
Gill Sans as its basis, although with numerous modifications. Gill Sans,
in turn, was based on the well-known Johnston
signage typeface, which was designed for the London Underground railway
system early in the 20th century during World War I.

Norway

Until 2002, Norway used a font for their license
plates (that’s still used on highway signage) called Trafikkalfabetet, which is similar to the font used on U.S. interstate
highway signs. Then they decided to switch to a more squarish techno
font, which was designed by the factory producing the plates. However,
while futuristic in appearance, it caused problems for toll-road and
police OCR cameras. So in 2006 they changed again, this time to Adobe’s
Myriad typeface.

Switzerland

The Swiss number plate font is a bit of an
odd duck compared to those of other European countries. Perhaps as would
befit this quintessentially neutral country, the alpha characters are
a mixture of traits from around Europe, while the numbers contain the
oval-shaped curves often seen on U.S. license plates.

United
Kingdom

In September 2001, the font known
as “Charles Wright 2001” was mandated for use on
British plates, an update to the previous standard font that had been
designed by Charles Wright several decades earlier, in 1935. (See font
links and samples below to compare.) Sometimes the previous font is
called the “old Charles Wright font” by those in the plate-making
trade, while the new font is called the ”new Charles Wright font”
or just the “Charles Wright font,” for short. (Oddly, research
for this article turned up no information about who Charles Wright was
— or if Charles Wright was in fact an individual at all, or perhaps
the name of a company instead. If you know more, we’d like to hear.
Email us at:
.)

There were several reasons for this legislated font change,
including a font more easily recognized by OCR (optical character recognition)
software used by speed cameras and video devices, as well as characters
that would be easier to read by accident and crime witnesses. For example,
serifs were added to letters B and D, to make them less easily confused
with 8 and capital O, respectively. Also, anti-tampering features such
as changes to the P and 9 were implemented to make them difficult to
falsify and alter into, respectively, R and 8.

Vehicle owners responsible for getting plates made, which
had introduced font variation. Also, while the old Charles
Wright font was considered the standard font prior to 2001, it seems
as though there was no strict enforcement. Muddying the font waters
is that the
British DVLA (the central licensing
authority) — even today with the newer legally mandated font —
requires vehicle owners to have plates made themselves, and this
is often handled apparently by garages and/or
car dealers. This would account for the variations often
seen in examples of the old Charles Wright font. (It will be interesting
to see how much font variation may creep back in despite today’s
mandated font, with vehicle owners still being responsible for having
plates made and the DVLA opting out of it themselves.) Any type of
reliable information about the origin of the old Charles Wright font
has been very difficult to come by, so if you have any insight about
this, email
.

Highly non-standard fonts an issue prior to the 2001 change.
Complicating matters further, prior to the new rules, some vehicle owners
would purposely use completely non-standard fonts such as italic or
blackletter typestyles as a form of personal expression. Because of
this, over the years more plates used fonts that were hard to read,
or creative spacing was used to form unintended acronyms out of the
original plate numbers, making plates read differently (nicknames, funny
or memorable phrases, purposely misleading numbers, etc.), and this
had become a minor irritant to authorities. For that matter, while people
conform much more closely to the new 2001 legally mandated font standard,
there still seems to be room for a bit of variation even with it, which
is inevitable with many different plate-makers not under the direct
command of the central licensing authority.

Anonymous typeface predating the old Charles Wright font.
In addition to the new and old Charles Wright fonts, there is another,
anonymously designed font of uncertain origins (see Lutz Headline below)
that has been used on British number plates as well, though infrequently
in modern times, and which apparently predates the old Charles Wright
font. (See these examples, each indicated by the plate number: EMP 636C,
246 D 168,
PYL 483F,
Q85 JBW.)
Most examples and variations of this font seem to occur on replacement
plates for older or classic vehicles with plate numbers first issued
earlier in the 20th century, presumably as a way of maintaining the
”classic” or ”vintage” look and feel of the
car, down to and including the the number plate itself.

A few plate numbers produced in this font style that can be seen in
photos of remade plates were number sequences first issued in 1904,
which was the year legally required number plates in Britain were introduced.
(Other examples of the font we’ve seen date back to plate number
sequences from the 1950s/ 1960s.) This timing
would mesh with the observation that the anonymous font’s design
is characteristic of the early ”Grotesque Sans” style typical
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while the “old Charles
Wright” design from 1935 is a more modern-looking squarish typeface.
Again, however, we’ve seen no information on this. What information
we’ve mentioned here has been inferred from studying plate collector
photos, but might not be competely correct.

Below are replicas or “inspired-by” versions of the two
different font eras:

U.K. Fonts
for the Era Up Through 2001

Alpha
Headline | Cornel Windlin,
1991, updated to 4 weights with lowercase in 2002. Inspired by the 1935
Charles Wright font. Design exclusive to Mitsubishi Motors for a 10-year
period ending in 2012.

No
alphabet sample available. Click font name above for further
explanation and link to offsite font sample at Lineto.com. Once there,
click on the links at the upper right numbered 2 through 5 to cycle
through the font samples.

Lutz Headline
| 1997, Cornel Windlin, commercial. Based
on an early font style used on British plates around the beginning of
the 1900s.

U.K. Fonts
for the Era After 2001

Charles
Wright 2001 | 2001,
based on the 1935 Charles Wright font but updated/
modified according to British DVLA requirements, designer unknown.

No
alphabet sample available — but see replicas below.
Or click font name above for link to offsite font sample, purchasing
information, plus a diagram showing the required character size and
spacing for use on number plates.

Since September 2001, use of this typeface is mandated on U.K. number
plates. The typeface consists of two character sets, one called Charles
Wright Mandatory containing just numbers and capital alpha characters
for license plate use. The other set called Charles Wright Regular adds
a full Central European accented character set plus punctuation characters,
though no lowercase.

The typeface was condensed to
allow for the 7 digits in the plate number plus the new “Euroband”
or European country identification code at the left side to all fit
on the plate.

The new design was made substantially
bolder.

Serifs were added to B and D
to make them less easily confused with numeral 8 and capital O respectively.

The previous sharper central vertexes
of M and W were truncated, making them flat. This change
combined with the more condensed widths of the new M and W have ended
up making the angled strokes forming their central vertexes more difficult
to distinguish from a distance. The net result is actually a decrease
in legibiilty for these two characters.

Disallowed characters: Since
the capital I and numeral 1 share exactly the same design (a straight
vertical stroke with no serifs), only the numeral 1 is used on number
plates to avoid confusion. Also, the Q is not used on plates registered
after the 2001 mandate, but is included for updating older plates.

“Look and feel” of old vs. new Charles Wright fonts.
As some other commentators versed in typography have noted, the earlier
1935 Charles Wright font is actually more aesthetically pleasing from
a design perspective. Its features adhere more closely and harmoniously
to the basic design motif across the entire character set for a sleeker
look. Also, whether or not the 2001 version is more legible than the
previous one, its legibility could be improved further, given the design
as it is. It’s really too bold for optimum legibility at a distance
— the current overly thick strokes reduce counterspace (interior
white space) too much. An additional side effect is that since the emboldening
was done without the optical compensations for human perception normally
incorporated by professional type designers (where horizontal strokes
are made a little thinner than verticals), the thickened font appears
clunkier at the same time. (See our discussion about the problems with
3M’s default font for U.S. flat digital plates for more about
the boldness vs. counterspace
tradeoff.)

Additional note: The ”mandatory” use of this font
is a bit more flexible than it sounds. What is actually mandatory are
the character height and width, stroke width, and spacing between characters.
Exact adherence to the letter shapes themselves is not required as long
as the basic shape of each letterform as depicted in the Charles Wright
font is followed.

European
“Grunge” Number Plate Fonts

Destroyed
License Plate | 2010,
Damien Gosset, free for personal use. A reworked and updated
version of the previous F**ked Plate
from 2005 (just below). Grittier than before, and now with accented
characters for the major European languages.

F**ked
Plate | 2005, Damien
Gosset, free for personal use. Yes, that’s the F-word in the font
name, disguised here so this web page doesn’t get screened out
by overzealous “kid-safe” search engine filters. Based
on pictures of broken number plates from vehicles in France.